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Princess at his side. Isabella had quitted her litter on re-entering her own dominions, and now rode a cream-coloured charger, which she managed with the grace and dignity of one wellaccustomed to the exercise, alike in processions of peace and scenes of war.

seek and win her. The chivalry of Don Ferdinand Morales was proved, yet more after marriage than before.

(To be continued.)

It was over the procession had at length passed: she had scanned every face and form whose gallant bearing proclaimed him noble; The difference of age between the sovereigns but Arthur Stanley was not amongst them, and was not perceivable,* for the grave and thought- inexpressibly relieved, Marie Morales sunk ful character of Ferdinand gave him rather the ap- down on a low seat, and covering her face with pearance of seniority; while the unusual fairness her hands, lifted up her whole soul in one wild of Isabella's complexion, her slight and some--yet how fervent !-burst of thanksgiving. what small stature, produced on her the contrary effect. The dark grey eye, the rich brown hair and delicate skin of the Queen of Castile deprived her, somewhat remarkably, of all the characteristics of a Spaniard, but, from their very novelty, attracted the admiration of her subjects. Beautiful she was not; but her charm lay in the variable expression of her features. Peculiarly and sweetly feminine, infused, as Washington Irving observes, with "a soft, tender melancholy,' as was their general expression, they could yet so kindle into indignant majesty, so flash with reproach or scorn, that the very colour of the eye became indistinguishable, and the boldest and the strongest quailed beneath the mighty and the holy spirit, which they could not but feel, that frail woman form enshrined.

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Round the Sovereigns were grouped, in no regular order of march, but forming a brilliant cortège, many of the celebrated characters of their reign-men, not only of war, but of literature and wisdom, whom both monarchs gloried in distinguishing above their fellows, seeking to exalt the honour of their country not only in extent of dominion, but by the shining qualities of her sons. It was to this group the strained gaze of Marie turned, and became rivetted on the Queen, feeling strangely and indefinably a degree of comfort as she gazed; to explain wherefore, even to herself, was impossible; but she felt as if she no longer stood alone in the wide world, whose gaze she dreaded : a new impulse rose within her, urging her, instead of remaining indifferent, as she thought she should, to seek and win Isabella's regard. She gazed and gazed, till she could have fancied her very destiny was in some way connected with the Queen's visit to Segovia-that some mysterious influences were connecting her, insignificant as she was, with Isabella's will. She strove with the baseless vision; but it would gain ground, folding up her whole mind in its formless imaginings. The sight of her husband, conversing eagerly with the sovereign, in some degree startled her back to the present scene. His cheek was flushed with exercise and excitement; his large dark eyes glittering, and a sunny smile robbing his mouth of its wonted expression of sternness. On passing his mansion he looked eagerly up, and with proud and joyous greeting doffed his velvet cap, and bowed with as earnest reverence as if he had still to

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THE COMMON LOT;

OR, THOUGHTS IN A CROWD.

BY GEORGE HALSE.

Seated 'mid many, with a searching glance
I scanned and read the countenance of each,
And could discern, as in an open book,
Trouble and sorrow traced in every one;
And tho' they were of various grade and age
And information-tho' they differèd

In thoughts, in years, in knowledge, in pursuit-
Yet all on one great question would agree,
That life and trouble are analogous.
And then my busy fancy did assign
To every one a calling, and a cause
For meditative grief. This man, I thought,
Has raised himself upon a pinnacle
'Twixt wealth and ruin, hazarding his all
For more; yet such his appetite for gold,
That should the chance enrich or beggar him,
He'll still remain the same unhappy man.
And this old man, his dismal crape bespeaks
The death of her-the idol of his youth,
Friend of his prime, and comfort of his age;
Who trod with him the labyrinth of life,
And cheered him onward; his bereaved heart
Turns half reproachingly to Heav'n, that he
Was not first called away; his only prayer
Is soon to join his partner in the grave.
And this has felt the bosom-rending pang
Of true love unrequited, or opposed
By the misjudgment of the thrifty friend.
And this betrays an inward agony;
A load of guilt hangs heavy on his soul-
Of guilt unpunish'd by the laws of man,
Tho' racked in consciousness the Law of GOD!
And this has passed the smiling time of life,
When youth and beauty hid the seeds of death,
For now he feels the progress of disease,
And, conscious that his dissolution's near,
He madly wishes he had never lived.
And this one harbours in his breast a sting
Which turns upon himself, for he alone
Its venom tastes; ambition reigneth there.
And this I thought, and shudder'd as I thought,
Has met an irrecoverable loss-

A parent's death! I turned mine eyes away,
Nor dared to look upon his face again.
And this, I thought, finds poverty the curse,
The visitation of a life mis-spent:
He thinks the day of reformation past,
And stubbornly continues in the path-
Which kept, will lead his wretched soul to-where?
And yonder sat a noble-looking boy:

Amongst the many his the only cheek
Where glowed the blood of happiness and health,
Amongst the many his the only face
Which rivetted my sight: I joyed to think
That he at least had never heaved a sigh,
When suddenly the bloom forsook his brow,
And lo! his eye was deluged; like a flash
Of lightning o'er the vision was the change
Wrought by the magic of his memory.

Poor child! he too had proved what grief implies;
He must have lost his little bosom-friend-

A bird, or kitten, or perhaps a toy ;
Tho' but a toy, yet still he feels his loss,
As older men feel greater. Thus I mused;
And all, regardless of my fixèd glance,
Were themes for my reflection. Tho' my mind
Had misconceived their thoughts, still every one
Could tell some very melancholy tale
Of love, or death, or sin, or poverty-
For all alike are living evidence

That SORROW IS THE COMMON LOT OF all.

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LIGHT IN DARKNESS.

""Love's Sacrifice," &c.

By the Author of "The Provost of Bruges," "The Trustee,"

It is a strange place, this London of ours, in which life seems especially to live in masquerade. From wretched cellars, whose damp loathsomeness the eye shrinks from contemplating, will at times break forth the jovial burst of the beggar's merriment and the squeak of his tuneless fiddle; while the trim, decent-looking street or the retired suburb still more frequently conceals in its unfurnished chambers the unsuspected retreats of famishing but silent misery.

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In a street of the latter description, whose exact locality it is unimportant to name, but whose eight-roomed houses generally sheltered a nearly equal number of families, graduating in importance from the "first-floor front" to the back attic or kitchen, was to be seen a small doctor's shop; not one of the flaunting chemists and druggists of modern days, whose gas-lights and globular bottles put out your eyes for five minutes after passing them; but a veritable apothecary's, as humble and unobtrusive as the neighbourhood in which its lot had been cast: three small bottles, red, white, and blue, but looking otherwise more like the spirit samples of a wine-vault, adorned a narrow shelf in the middle of the window; two white jars, labelled leeches," flanked the space below; while in the midst stood a sixpenny figure of a white horse, surrounded by a few pill-boxes and pitch plasters: above was inscribed in modest paint, instead of gold, "Hamblin, surgeon, &c. ;" and on the shelves within were ranged two or three dozen bottles of superannuated drugs, over a nest of drawers, whose half effaced labels suggested the possibility of their still containing the sweepings of some other portions of the materia medica. The whole place had a desolate and bankrupt air, scarcely relieved by the faded green curtain of a little glass door, communicating with a small parlour behind: these two rooms contained the whole possessions, as they furnished the sole accommodation, whether for gaining bread or eating it, of Charles Hamblin, his wife, and three children. A small painted board told that a mangle lodged below; a painter's journeyman (who, as his wife was a pew-opener at the neighbouring church, mounted a brass plate with their common name on the private door) rented the one pair front; and as for the other four or five occupants of the remainder of the house, they are as unknown to history as they were to each other.

And yet it was but a few years before, that Charles Hamblin had been the gay and courted idol of the most jovial circles of gay and jovial London, and his now pale and fragile wife the belle of a hundred drawing-rooms-the beautiful Helen Masters, the only child of one of the city's proudest merchants: they met often; and

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a girlish and boyish passion terminated in a runaway match. It was perhaps a grievous fault," but "grievously they answered it." The indignant father disclaimed and renounced his thoughtless child; and the young husband was thrown for the support of a family upon resources which past experience had proved scarcely adequate to his own.

But they loved each other, and resolved to be happy; and they framed a thousand schemes of retrenchment, which could not fail to keep them afloat till brighter skies should open above them; and heartily they laughed over anticipated privations, which at a distance took no harsher form than that of inconveniences. It seemed but like playing at poverty for a year or two-it could not be longer; for Charles, with his talents (and he would study like a very tiger), could not fail to make a rapid progress in his profession; and Helen was quite certain her father would soon relent, for she knew how he loved her, and he had none on earth beside.

And he did relent, but it was on a bed of death; and the voice that whispered his forgiveness in his daughter's ear told her too that the same hour which saw him a corpse would proclaim him a bankrupt, long dependent for his parade of wealth upon the means of others, who would seize the very bed on which that corpse lay stretched.

This was indeed a blow; but Charles Hamblin struggled manfully against it, soothing with double tenderness his broken-hearted wife, now made a mother.

Action, however, was the thing called for. Sanguine in their hope of an early relief, they had suffered some small debts to accumulate. These must now be paid, and for this purpose the few articles of luxury they had possessed were parted with, and a still humbler residence selected. But Charles's energy seemed only to grow with the occasion, and undying hope rebounded from her fall with doubled strength.

Yet somehow things did not succeed; and again and again they changed their home, and always to a lowlier one, till they had reached the point at which we found them. And the strength of the strong man now was gone: the spirit of the strong man now was broken. The oak, which had spread out its lusty arms to dare the tempest, was wrecked and shattered; yet the slender ozier he had sought to screen still sprang elastic from the blast, waving the verdure of her tender leaves about his almost blighted trunk. Oh, beauteous spectacle of woman's gentle constancy-oh, wondrous mystery of woman's never-wearying love and truth!

Seven years had passed since their marriage; and in that gloomy little parlour sat the young

wife her years could not yet have reached fiveand-twenty, and a gentle though somewhat faded loveliness still clung about her pale cheek, and beamed from her soft brown eyes, while the glossy and carefully braided hair, the neatly fitting, though common and simple dress, and a certain quiet grace of manner which vulgarity of mind can never succeed in attaining, showed that whatever sufferings, whatever privations the woman might have undergone, the lady had survived in her through them all. She was engaged in the manufacture of some light fancy articles, to which task in her moments of leisure (and these must have been very few) she always professed to turn for relaxation; and her husband endeavoured to believe her, though he never dared inquire why none of them were ever seen again when once completed, nor by what magic his scanty earnings, and the receipts of the little shop were enabled to do so much. It would have been cruelty to pry into the only secret she reserved from him, and in his presence she looked always happy.

shall not know the curse to bring the feelings and the cravings of a gentleman to satisfy them on a beggar's means."

One intense, entreating glance met his raised eye, which sank sullenly before it. "You may as well know it," he muttered. "That scoundrel Williams has decamped, leaving every bill unpaid, and mine among the rest. That was our last resource."

A deep sigh, an unconscious one, was all the answer. This was indeed a blow. "Yet you have been much occupied to-day," she at length timidly suggested.

"Ay, with beggars; who, if they would pay me, must pawn from under them the beds on which their wretched carcasses are laid. I have indeed abundant practice of that kind." And he laughed bitterly.

Yet he had begun to talk; and the watchful wife, laying down her work, drew her chair nearer to him.

"It is indeed sad, Charles, very discourag ing," she began in a low voice. "And yet," At the same table, poring over some prints of she added gently, and after a little pause, lest grim skeletons in an old anatomical work, was a the effort at consolation should be unwelcome, beautiful fair-haired boy, of about six years old," and yet it makes me often happy, nay, almost the father's darling and their first-born; who, passing by the grandfather's name, had been called Edward in those early days when it was fondly thought so sweet a little namesake could not fail to be a powerful mediator in winning back an offended parent's love.

On a low footstool, by her mother's side, against whose knee her curly head was laid, sat little Helen, a budding promise of that mother's counterpart; and, in a cradle opposite, at last was sleeping a restless baby, the child of their worst fortunes, on whom, as much in bitterness as love, his father's name had been bestowed. Yet little Charlie was a sturdy, healthy rogue, and as self-willed and violent withal as though he had no intention of submitting to the buffets of the world without at least a struggle.

Presently the door slowly opened, and Mr. Hamblin himself came in, splashed to the knees with the winter night's mud; his cheek thin and haggard, his brow contracted, and his eyes bent in sullen moodiness upon the ground. There was one anxious glance, but no word of greeting was exchanged; for the grieving wife saw that a tempest was at work within him; but she silently rose, settled his chair in the exact spot where he loved it best, placed the warm slippers before it, and then returned to resume her occupation; waiting, with thoughtful tenderness, her cue for interruption.

Less experienced, however, or less prudent, little Edward raised his head from the mysterious forms and unimaginable names over which he had been pondering, and exclaimed eagerly, Papa, when I am a man I'll be a surgeon." "Never!" the father exclaimed, with a bitter violence, that made the startled child hang down his blushing head. "Never! you shall be a chimney-sweep-a shoe-black-a raker of the kennels-the sweeper of a crossing-and I will breed you to it; you shall expect no better; you

proud, to think how frequently we-I would say you-are permitted to carry health and joy to the wretched homes of poverty, disease, and despair, which none else visited. How many, oh how many a tongue which, but for y would have been silent in the grave, has used its first strength to call down blessings on your head!"

"They are rather long in coming, though," he answered, with a scornful laugh.

"But they will come, Charles," she replied, taking his passive hand; "trust me they will at last. Nay, think how many we possess already, health, mutual love, our children; which of these would we exchange for competency, ay, or for boundless wealth?”

He did not answer, but he pressed her hand. "I often think," she continued more cheerfully, "of the warm gratitude of that poor coachman, Peters, both whose jaws a horse's kick had shattered so frightfully. What an extraordinary cure that was! And, when it was so happily completed, did you grudge that he had no payment to offer you beyond his prayers and blessings, and the joyous echo these awoke in your own heart?"

Ay, that was a cure," murmured Hamblin, fixing his eyes upon the scanty fire. "If any other man had accomplished it, the medical journals would have been filled with every minute detail of it, and his skill would have been trumpeted to all the world. A Cooper or a Brodie would not have disdained to wear that as a leaf among his laurels."

He paused, and sank into a reverie, which the expression of his countenance told was no unpleasing one.

"I forget now," said his wife, after a pause, "I forget the exact course you adopted in so apparently hopeless a case."

She had touched the right chord, for he at

once began―at first lánguidly, but with in- | creasing interest as he went on-to recount minutely every step of the progress of a cure, of which he felt, indeed deservedly, proud; and she attended with as earnest interest as though she heard the relation for the first instead of the hundredth time. She then led him on to talk of other cases of difficulty in which he had been equally fortunate. The little artifice succeeded. She had let in a ray of light upon his darknessgradually the gloom passed away till, in an hour his children were upon his knees, and then the smiling and, for the moment, happy wife, silently withdrew to resume, with double industry, her former employment.

Months rolled on with little change-and still that pure light struggled and forced its way through the thick clouds around it. But one morning the large corner shop, which had been long to let, showed signs of coming occupation; it was an event in the little neighbourhood; carpenters, glaziers, and painters hammered, scraped, and painted on all sides; the street was broken up, and the gas laid on. Suddenly there shot out from the corner an enormous lamp, whose glowing bull's-eyes looked down both the streets; above the window letters of gold, a foot in length, announced-" Simpkins, Chemist and Druggist;" on the door a brass plate, two feet in breadth, proclaimed-" Simpkins, Surgeon and Accoucheur;" on the panes of the giant lamp were to be read-" Simpkins, Dispensing Chemist;” “ Simpkins, Dentist and Cupper." Labels of blue and gold thronged the windows, advertising all that either sickness or luxury could demand-from the choicest drugs to fancy soap and soda-water; prescriptions were accurately prepared, at a moment's notice; advice given to the poor, gratis; the complaints of children particularly well understood; French spoken for foreigners; and, as the seal and warrantry of the whole, certificates from the College of Surgeons and the Apothecaries' Company displayed their authoritative letters in gilt frames of massive beauty. Strangers came from two or three streets off to gaze, to buy, and to consult. Mr. Simpkins, with this splendour, could not be other than a great and a most skilful man; and in the blaze of his brightness the dull, obscure, little shop four or five doors off was extinguished, lost, swept clean from memory; or, at best, left only as a retreat for the shy and timid, who dared not enter the brilliant hall of medicine for their humble pennyworth of salts.

The effect was soon felt in Hamblin's family. What had been poverty became want. Even the toilsome and unremunerating visitings which had, hitherto at least, occupied the attention and interest of the unhappy man, were now at an end; for it seemed that the very beggars preferred the gratuitous advice of the great shop at the corner to that of the little one down the street; and his days were passed chiefly within doors, seated in gloomy abstraction beside his cheerless hearth. His temper grew morose and sullen, except when the fatal aid of ardent

spirits-to which he now began to have recourse-gave, for the moment, a boisterous and unnatural excitement; and the still patient wife, neglected and unnoticed, felt the shadow settling daily, darker and darker, on her own open brow. Every tenderness of affection, every suggestion of hope and comfort love could devise had been repeated, till it soothed no longer, or only irritated the wounds it sought to heal. Yet when his eye was upon her, it ever found her cheerful still-when it was away, it ever left her gentle and resigned. What could she more?

It was night. The children, fractious and peevish all the day, had at last fallen asleep, and the parents sat silent and alone. The timid wife dared not speak, for Hamblin's irritability had been this day little short of madness.

"It must end!" he cried at length, starting suddenly to his feet, and glaring wildly round. "Yes, dearest Charles," she answered, gently, "it must end at last; and, perhaps, at the moment we least expect it. How many have proved that exactly man's extremity is God's chosen opportunity-chosen, perhaps, to make us own that the aid indeed came from Him, since we have felt and proved the utter helplessness of all our own exertions! Our trial is indeed a severe one, Charles; but, though unseen, mercy still reigns in heaven."

"Ay, for the widow and the orphans!" he answered, passionately. "They have the promise of it, and I-I keep you from your claim." And he turned towards the door.

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Where are you going, Charles?"

"To get some medicine for a suffering wretch that I have neglected too long."

He closed the door behind him, and, with a heart that fluttered so, it almost ceased to beat, she watched him through the crevice of the curtain. He passed behind the counter, and as the dim gleam of the one unsnuffed candle fell on his haggard features, his teeth were set, his lips compressed, his eyes dilated and fixed on one small bottle; there was a little-a very little-clear fluid in it, but the label bore the words-" Hydrocyanic Acid." For a minute he stood immoveable, and then his trembling and unsteady hand reached towards the bottle. But before it touched it, a light grasp was on his arm; and, as he turned, a face met his, whose deadly livid paleness startled even him. She did not speak-she did not even hint at his suspected purpose; but, firmly and silently, led him back to the room he had just quitted. There, in a hoarse and hollow voice, while her unmoving eye never quitted his; Charles," she said, "you have not noticed it, and I would not name it to you before, but now it may rouse you to exertion-Edward is ill.”

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She led him to the little crib where the flushed and restless boy lay.

"Charles," she continued, 'your child-my child-demands his father's care."

He took the little hand in his. He felt the rough and burning skin; and he whispered"It is scarlet fever: they will all contract it: they will all die."

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